In 1954, as part of the most ambitious urban renewal project in U.S. history, the modernist Pruitt-Igoe public houses were completed in St. Louis, Missouri. By 1974, all 33 buildings had become apocalyptic drug dens and were leveled, along with the dream of affordable housing for America's growing underclass. Armed with archival footage and wrenching interviews, filmmaker Chad Freidrichs revisits one of our nation's darkest hours---and emerges with a scrupulous, revelatory consideration of the varied factors that turned a worthy plan into a horrific, state-sanctioned nightmare for a generation of working-class African-Americans. It's a heartbreaking alarm call for a society that desperately needs to learn from its worst mistakes.
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